World Health Organization
منظمة الصحة العالمية
Organisation mondiale de la Santé

Save Surgery Saves Lives inaugurated today in Amman

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H.E. Dr Naief Elfaiez, Minister of Health, Jordan, inaugurated today the Regional meeting currently held in Amman on save surgery saves lives, a WHO initiative aims at improving safe surgical care as part of the patients safety measures and public health issue with significant importance.

In his inaugural speech, Dr Naief said that WHO is ambitious to see that the checklist the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, which identifies a set of surgical safety standards to reduce the rate of surgical complications is implemented by all hospitals in the world as a very useful tool to achieve patient safety. “ the implementation of the checklist in hospitals will enhance the trust in the health systems through improving patient quality of lives.

In his speech during the opening session, Dr Hussein Gezairy, The WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, reiterated that surgical care and its safe delivery can potentially affect the lives of millions of people worldwide. Results from the study showed that the rate of major complications fell from 11% in the baseline period to 7% after introduction of the checklist, a reduction of more than one third. Inpatient deaths following major operations fell by more than 40 percent with implementation of the checklist.

The participants, representing 22 Member States, are discussing the strategy for implementing the checklist in hospitals and health centers in the Region after the successful results of the pilot experience in the Region and the lessons learnt.

On the other hand, H.E Minister of Health affirmed that the checklist is simple and aims at making Anesthesia operation safer and ensuring proper prevention against infection, in addition to increasing the effectiveness of the operating team and all other practices related to care provision at different stages of the operation

In the developed world, nearly half of all adverse events in hospitalized patients are related to surgical care and services.

There have clearly been great advances for safer surgery across many parts of the world in recent years however the situation remains a challenge.

It is worth mentioning that save surgery initiative was launched by WHO to the whole world in 2008. already 310 institutions are implementing the initiative world wide, among them more that 30 institutions in the Eastern Mediterranean Region . More than 230 million major operations are performed annually across the world.

Applying conservative estimates to the global surgical volume indicate that, at a minimum, 7 million patients have significant postoperative complications, including at least one million deaths (15%). At least half of these events are considered to be preventable.